"Never mind," he said, philosophically.

"By Jove, it's a jolly sweet thing is life--ripping, simply ripping.

Good bye, old chap. Sniff upwards and it'll soon stop. So long."

In a brake where the wood falls back a little from the inroad of the common the poet paused, for the gleam of a straw hat against a dark background caught his eye.

"Why surely--no--yes, it is--how singular--so it is," he murmured, wiping his gla.s.ses.

He left the path and struck out over the springy turf into the shade of the wood, keeping his eyes nevertheless upon the ground, and walking guilelessly, as one who contemplates.

And by chance his meditations were broken, and before him, among some tall foxgloves, stood Mollie Gerald.

The poet looked surprised.

"How--how quietly you must walk, Miss Gerald," he said.

She laughed.

"How deeply you must think," she said.

"It--it is good to wake from thought to--to this, you know," he answered, with a bow.

Miss Gerald looked comprehensively into the wood.

"It is pretty, isn't it?" she said.

"I was not referring to the wood," said the poet, hardily.

Miss Gerald bent over a foxglove rising gracefully over the bracken:

"Aren't they lovely?" she asked, showing the poet a handful of the purple flowers.

"You came out to gather flowers?"

"Why, no. I came to look for my pupil."

"Surely not again a truant?"

"I am afraid so."

"It is hard to believe."

"And I stopped in my search to gather some of these. After all, it isn't much good looking for a child in a wood, is it?"

"Quite useless, I should think."

"If they want to be found they'll come home, and if they don't, they know the woods far better than we, and they'll hide."

"They always come back at meal-times--at least, Tommy does."

"I think meal-times are among the happiest hours of an average childhood."

"Before the higher faculties have gained their powers of appreciation--it depends on the child."

"Madge is not an imaginative child."

"Nor Tommy, I think, and yet I don't know. It is hard to appraise the impressions that children receive and cannot record."

"And the experiment--how does it progress?"

"Alas, it is an experiment no longer; it is a very real responsibility, and I am inadequate. Individually, I fancy we are all inadequate, and, collectively, we do not seem quite to have found the way."

Miss Gerald nodded emphatically.

"Good," she said.

"Eh?"

"To feel inadequate is the beginning of wisdom; is it not so? There, I have gathered my bunch."

"May I beg one foxglove for my coat?"

She laughed.

"There are plenty all round you. Why, you are standing in the middle of a plant at this moment."

The poet stooped a little disconsolately, and plucked a stalk, and when he looked up Miss Gerald was already threading her way through the slender trunks.

"Good-bye," she cried, gaily, over her shoulder, and the poet raised his hat.

As he sauntered back to the path the doctor rode by on his pony.

"Hullo," he said; "been picking flowers?"

The poet looked up.

"A pretty flower, the foxglove," he murmured.

"Digitalis purpurea--a drug, too, is it not?"

The doctor nodded.

"It has an action on the heart," he said. "Steadies and slows it, you know."

But the poet shook his head.